Avlon: Huntsman, The Dark Horse

It’s so crazy, it just might work.

Jon Huntsman is set to officially announce his run for the presidency today in sight of the Statue of Liberty, where the Gipper kicked off his fall campaign in 1980.

The Reagan homage is intended to remind Republicans that Huntsman comes from the Western conservative tradition of a genial chief executive whose core electoral attribute is supposed to be the ability to win crossover votes.

Huntsman’s entry into the race has the chattering class chattering, even as conservative activists and Republican consultants consider his campaign a non-starter. There’s just no way, they say, that a former Obama ambassador who intends to make civility a strategic centerpiece of his campaign can compete in an increasingly conservative populist GOP.

There’s no question it’s a long shot. But it is also true that even in the heady opening weeks of the Obama administration, Huntsman was regarded as the Republican that Barack & Co. least wanted to run against in 2012. That’s why they came up with the bright idea of bringing Huntsman into the fold as China ambassador. It didn’t stick.

Huntsman is the latest embodiment of the classic Catch-22 of partisan politics—the candidate most likely to win a general election has the hardest time winning the nomination. The qualities that make them so competitive in the fall alienate the base.